‘Forced’ Online Religion: Religious Minority and Majority Communities’ Media Usage during the COVID-19 Lockdown
Abstract
:1. Introduction
In light of the latest announcements from the Danish government and the health authorities, I strongly urge all religious communities in Denmark to organize religious acts in a way to avoid rapid spread [sic] of Corona infection. […] I strongly urge all religious communities in Denmark to similarly cancel all religious activities, church services, Friday prayers, Mass, etc. where many people are gathered in the same place for the next 14 days. Instead, the prayers could perhaps be videotaped and uploaded to your website.
2. Denmark: A Digital Nation with a State Church
3. Materials and Methods
4. Review of Research Field(s)
5. Results
5.1. Majority Case: Digital Communion in Folkekirken?
5.2. Minority Cases: Muslim Prayers in Denmark
The closure of the mosques was another important cue or sign as to the seriousness of the virus, identified as important by participants because the mosques are central to community worship that is a key part of Muslim community life and consequently mosques are rarely if ever closed.
The internet is presented as a social technology that helps people of shared faith gather together, thereby connecting those from the same religious tradition who would normally be separated by geography, time, or other limitations. This ties in to the image of the Islamic “digital ummah,” or the Christian global or networked “body of Christ”.
6. Discussion
Author Contributions
Funding
Informed Consent Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | Dora (2018) has proposed to distinguish between the hyphenated “post-secular”, which indicates a break with the secular condition, and the unhyphenated “postsecular,” which describes an ongoing secular condition. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’ theory on postsecularity (Habermas 2008, 2012), in this article we use the unhyphenated version, because Habermas does clearly limit his use of the term to what he defines as the secular and secularized societies of Europe and countries such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In these countries, “religion maintains a public influence and relevance, while the secularistic certainty that religion will disappear worldwide in the course of modernization is losing ground” (Habermas 2008, p. 21). |
2 | The scope of this study is similar to the scope of the mapping project ‘Religion in Aarhus’ conducted by Centre for Contemporary Religion in 2013. The ‘Religion in Aarhus’ project is about to be repeated in 2022, making the 2020 COVID-19 survey (Larsen et al. 2021b) a prelimirary study. The specific Aarhus area is outlined in this map: https://samtidsreligion.au.dk/fileadmin/Samtidsreligion/Religion_i_Aarhus_2013/online_med_forside.pdf#page=483. Accessed on 2 July 2021. |
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Religious Group | Yes | No | No Data |
---|---|---|---|
Christian groups | 6 | 11 | 4 |
Muslim groups | 2 | 11 | - |
Hindu groups | 2 | 1 | - |
Buddhist groups | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Other groups | 8 | 10 | 1 |
Total | 20 (33%) | 34 (57%) | 6 (10%) |
Religious Group | Yes | No | No Data |
---|---|---|---|
Christian groups | 16 | 5 | - |
Muslim groups | 8 | 5 | - |
Hindu groups | 3 | - | - |
Buddhist groups | 3 | 1 | - |
Other groups | 12 | 7 | - |
Total | 42 (70%) | 18 (30%) | - |
Religious Group | Yes | No | No Data |
---|---|---|---|
Christian groups | 10 | 7 | 4 |
Muslim groups | 8 | 5 | - |
Hindu groups | - | 2 | 1 |
Buddhist groups | 2 | - | 2 |
Other groups | 1 | 17 | 1 |
Total | 21 (35%) | 31 (52%) | 8 (13%) |
Religious Group | Yes | No | No Data |
---|---|---|---|
Christian groups | 11 | 4 | 6 |
Muslim groups | 3 | 9 | 1 |
Hindu groups | 2 | - | 1 |
Buddhist groups | 2 | - | 2 |
Other groups | 9 | 7 | 3 |
Total | 27 (45%) | 20 (33%) | 13 (22%) |
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Kühle, L.; Larsen, T.L. ‘Forced’ Online Religion: Religious Minority and Majority Communities’ Media Usage during the COVID-19 Lockdown. Religions 2021, 12, 496. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070496
Kühle L, Larsen TL. ‘Forced’ Online Religion: Religious Minority and Majority Communities’ Media Usage during the COVID-19 Lockdown. Religions. 2021; 12(7):496. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070496
Chicago/Turabian StyleKühle, Lene, and Tina Langholm Larsen. 2021. "‘Forced’ Online Religion: Religious Minority and Majority Communities’ Media Usage during the COVID-19 Lockdown" Religions 12, no. 7: 496. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070496